Mel Watt in Congress - The Prophesy of George H. White
On January 29, 1901 Congressman George H. White of North Carolina delivered his farewell speech on the floor of the United States House of Representatives. He had lost his election in November 1900 when 539 votes had been cast in one township in which there were only 345 registered voters and 492 more people than were registered in another township had voted against him.
George H. White was the last African American Member of Congress following Reconstruction. White concluded his speech with the following historic words: “This, Mr. Chairman, is perhaps the Negroes’ temporary farewell to the American Congress; but let me say, Phoenix-like, he will rise up some day and come again.”
Over 90 years later, in 1992, Mel Watt and Eva Clayton became the first African Americans elected to Congress from North Carolina since George H. White’s prophetic speech. They were both elected from districts drawn under the Voting Rights Act – districts drawn against a historical backdrop that included the 1900 election stolen from George H. White, North Carolina’s continuing practice of depriving African Americans of the vote by sundry methods and a persistent pattern of racially polarized voting. This backdrop had made it impossible for African Americans to be elected to Congress from North Carolina for over 90 years and it insured that litigation about the legality of the districts would be immediate and protracted.
The U.S. Supreme Court finally resolved the litigation and approved North Carolina’s congressional districts in 2001. By then, Mel Watt’s district had been reconfigured in five different ways and each configuration had been subjected to extensive judicial review.
Through it all, Mel had won reelection handily in each district configuration in which an election was held and he has won reelection to represent North Carolina’s 12th Congressional District in every election since.
Throughout the eight terms Mel Watt has been in Congress, he has served on the Judiciary Committee and on the Financial Services Committee, at various times serving on each of the Subcommittees of both Committees.
On the Judiciary Committee, Mel’s tenure includes service on:
- The Subcommittee on Immigration & Claims, on which Mel served as Ranking Member during the 1997-98 and 1999-2000 terms of Congress;
- The Subcommittee on the Constitution, on which Mel currently serves and has served throughout his tenure in Congress and on which he served as Ranking Member during the 2001-02 term of Congress;
- The Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law, on which Mel currently serves and on which he served as Ranking Member during the 2003-04 and 2005-06 terms of Congress;
- The Subcommittee on Crime, on which Mel has served a total of six years; and
- The Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property, on which Mel currently serves.
During Mel’s service on the Judiciary Committee, he has used his legal education and 22 years of legal practice and experience prior to being elected to Congress to be an active participant in shaping public policy on a broad range of important, yet often difficult and controversial, matters. These matters include:
- In the area of criminal law, efforts to craft the appropriate balance between the rights of criminal defendants and the rights of victims of crime and the public and the appropriate balance between prevention, punishment and rehabilitation;
- The impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton;
- In the aftermath of 9/11, efforts to craft the appropriate balance between homeland security and individual liberties and personal privacy in a number of areas (e.g. the Patriot Act, presidential powers, arrests, deportations, etc); and
- Negotiating the agreement and leading the bi-partisan extension of the Voting Rights Act for an additional 25 years in 2006.
Mel’s tenure on the Financial Services Committee includes service on:
- The Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, on which Mel currently serves as Chairman;
- The Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit Subcommittee, on which Mel currently serves and has served for 14 years;
- The Housing and Community Opportunity Subcommittee, on which Mel served for 6 years;
- The Capital Markets, Insurance & Government Sponsored Enterprises Subcommittee, on which Mel served for 2 years; and
- The Domestic and International Monetary Policy Subcommittee, on which Mel served for 10 years.
During his service on the Financial Services Committee, Mel has balanced the interests of his consumer constituents and the interests of his financial services/business constituents (the 12th District is home to the second largest concentration of financial services entities of any congressional district in the country, second only to the district that includes New York’s Wall Street area). Important issues under the jurisdiction of the Financial Services Committee on which Mel has played an active role in shaping public policy include:
- Legislation providing for the creation of Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) to enhance community development lending*;
- The Gramm-Leach-Bliley legislation which authorized mixing banking, securities, insurance and other financial services in the same corporation, subject to certain limitations;
- Ongoing efforts to increase access to affordable housing (ownership, rental and public), including reauthorizing and improving the HOPE VI Program, Section 8 vouchers and homeownership opportunities;
- The Sarbanes-Oxley legislation which enhanced corporate responsibility (officers, directors and accounting) in response to abuses at Enron; and
- Ongoing efforts to reduce predatory, discriminatory and other unfair and abusive lending practices.
In addition to his service on the Judiciary and Financial Services Committee, Mel also served two terms (2001-02 and 2003-04) on the Joint Economic Committee, one of the few Committees in Congress with membership from the House and the Senate.
In 2005 Mel was unanimously elected Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). During his tenure as Chair (2005-06), he successfully refined the agenda of the CBC to refocus on the CBC’s historic mission of closing and eliminating disparities between African Americans and others, led the CBC in crafting the only comprehensive legislation that was introduced in response to Hurricane Katrina and led the successful effort to reauthorize, improve and extend the Voting Rights Act.
Mel’s responsibilities have necessitated substantial international engagement on a broad range of matters, including governance and the rule of law, poverty and development (including Millennium Challenge matters), HIV/AIDS and other health matters, finance (monetary, accounting and international institutions), law enforcement and counterterrorism (especially issues related to money laundering and financing), protection of intellectual property, human rights and genocide, the environment and many others. This has required travel to a number of countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, South America and the Caribbean.
*A leading CDFI, Self-Help Credit Union, is based in North Carolina and is active in the 12th Congressional District. A non-profit formed by Self Help, the Center for Responsible Lending, has been a strong advocate against predatory lending.
